Yamen Manai is the author of the novel The Ardent Swarm, available now from Amazon Crossing. Winner of the Prix Comar d'Or and the Prix des Cinq Continents, it is the official March pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.

Manai was born in 1980 in Tunis and currently lives in Paris. Both a writer and an engineer, Manai explores the intersections of past and present, and tradition and technology, in his prose. In The Ardent Swarm (originally published as L'Amas ardent), his first book to be translated into English, he celebrates Tunisia's rich oral culture, a tradition abounding in wry, often fatalistic humor. He has published three novels with the Tunisia-based Elyzad Editions--a deliberate choice to ensure that his books are accessible to Tunisian readers: La marche de l'incertitude (2010), awarded Tunisia's prestigious Prix Comar d'Or; La sérénade d'Ibrahim Santos (2011); and L'Amas ardent (2017), which earned both the Prix Comar d'Or and the Prix des Cinq Continents, a literary prize recognizing exceptional Francophone literature.

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Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

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